AFL-CIO Blog

Now That Government Is Funded, Here Is What Workers Want to See
Linh Doh
Last year, in communities all across the country, millions of Americans mobilized and called for an economy that works for all of us. From state houses and governors mansions to Capitol Hill, we elected advocates who committed themselves to advancing that cause. That election was defined by a movement of hard working people who stood together to reject the meager crumbs we are being handed and reclaim what is rightfully ours.
In electing more than 900 union members to office, we secured a great opportunity to right the structural wrongs of our economy. Our mission was not simply to rack up victories on election night last November. We changed the rulemakers. Now it is time for them to change the rules. As legislators move past the manufactured crisis that defined the first weeks of the 116th Congress, working people are ready to fight for that change.
Above all, that means affirming our ability to have a real voice on the job. A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that half of all nonunion workers, or more than 60 million Americans, would choose to join a union if they were given the chance, yet aspiring union members continue to face countless obstacles. The power of working people must be unleashed. Whether we work for private companies or public employers, in an office or a mine or a factory, all of us have the right to freely negotiate higher wages and better working conditions.
Congress should modernize the badly outdated National Labor Relations Act to truly protect our freedom to organize and mobilize together. Top lawmakers have put forth promising proposals that would ensure workers can organize a union without facing scorched earth tactics and hostile campaigns from corporations. If workers sign up for a union, they deserve to know their decision is protected by law. It is not the job of executives, governors or right wing operatives to make those decisions for them.
However, our fight will not end with one piece of legislation. An agenda for working families means building a fairer economy and a more just society for everyone in our country, whether you are in a union or not. That means achieving full employment where every American is able to access a good job, passing a $15 federal minimum wage, and refusing to approve any trade agreement that lacks enforceable labor protections.
It means providing a secure and prosperous future for all our families by expanding Social Security, strengthening our pensions, and making a serious federal investment in our infrastructure. It means defending the health and lives of working people by shoring up the Affordable Care Act, removing onerous taxes on health insurance plans negotiated by workers, expanding Medicare coverage to more people, and lowering prescription drug costs. It means passing laws that ensure paid sick and family leave.
All of these guarantees are long overdue for working people, but there is arguably no task so vital as defending our right to safety and dignity on the job. Congress should also extend comprehensive federal protections, including the Equality Act, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status, to LGBTQ and immigrant workers, whose livelihoods and families too often rest on the whims of their employers.
As one of a handful of men in my family to survive the scourge of black lung in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, I cannot overstate the dire need for broadly strengthened safety regulations, including the expansion of Occupational Safety and Health Administration coverage to all workers, toughened federal enforcement, and ironclad whistleblower protections.
Corporations and right wing interests continue to try their best to deny working people our fair share of the enormous wealth that we produce every day. In November, we stood up to change that twisted status quo. We made our voices heard at the ballot box, and we intend to hold the people we elected accountable to an economic agenda that will raise wages, move our country forward, and lead to better lives for all of us.
This post originally appeared in The Hill.Kenneth Quinnell
Thu, 02/21/2019 - 12:57— Feb 21

An Open Letter to Game Developers from America's Largest Labor Organization
If an investor was searching for the country’s most explosively successful commodity, they might look to the ground for natural resources or to Wall Street for some new financial instrument. But the most meteoric success story can be found virtually all around us—in the booming video game industry. Growing by double digits, U.S. video game sales reached $43 billion in 2018, some 3.6 times greater than the film industry’s record-breaking box office.
It’s a stunning accomplishment—one built by legions of tireless game developers. There’s nothing more powerful than throwing yourself into your craft, putting in day after day of passionate, hard work.
Through the fog of sleepless nights that fade into morning, piles of crumpled Red Bull cans and incessant pressure from management, you have accomplished the unthinkable. You’ve built new worlds, designed new challenges and ushered in a new era of entertainment.
Now it’s time for industry bosses to start treating you with hard-earned dignity and respect.
Executives are always quick to brag about your work. It’s the talk of every industry corner office and boardroom. They pay tribute to the games that capture our imaginations and seem to defy economic gravity. They talk up the latest innovations in virtual reality and celebrate record-smashing releases, as your creations reach unparalleled new heights.
My question is this: What have you gotten in return? While you’re putting in crunch time, your bosses are ringing the opening bell on Wall Street. While you’re creating some of the most groundbreaking products of our time, they’re pocketing billions. While you’re fighting through exhaustion and putting your soul into a game, Bobby Kotick and Andrew Wilson are toasting to “their” success.
They get rich. They get notoriety. They get to be crowned visionaries and regarded as pioneers.
What do you get?
Outrageous hours and inadequate paychecks. Stressful, toxic work conditions that push you to your physical and mental limits. The fear that asking for better means risking your dream job.
We’ve heard the painful stories of those willing to come forward, including one developer who visited the emergency room three times before taking off from work. Developers at Rockstar Games recently shared stories of crunch time that lasted for months and even years in order to satisfy outrageous demands from management, delivering a game that banked their bosses $725 million in its first three days.
This is a moment for change. It won’t come from CEOs. It won’t come from corporate boards. And it won’t come from any one person.
Change will happen when you gain leverage by joining together in a strong union. And it will happen when you use your collective voice to bargain for a fair share of the wealth you create every day.
No matter where you work, bosses will only offer fair treatment when you stand together and demand it. Fortunately, the groundwork is already being laid as grassroots groups like Game Workers Unite embrace the power of solidarity and prove that you don’t have to accept a broken, twisted status quo.
You have the power to demand a stake in your industry and a say in your economic future. What’s more, you have millions of brothers and sisters across the country standing with you.
Your fight is our fight, and we look forward to welcoming you into our union family. Whether we’re mainlining caffeine in Santa Monica, clearing tables in Chicago or mining coal in West Virginia, we deserve to collect nothing less than the full value of our work.
This post originally appeared at Kotaku.Kenneth Quinnell
Thu, 02/21/2019 - 12:09
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Organizing— Feb 21

Black History Month Labor Profiles: Isaac Myers
For Black History Month, the AFL-CIO is spotlighting various African American leaders and activists who have worked at the intersection of civil and labor rights. Our next profile is Isaac Myers.
Isaac Myers was born in Baltimore in 1835 to free parents. The city's schools excluded African American children, so Myers had to learn to read and write from his minister. At 16, Myers took an apprenticeship with Thomas Jackson, an African American ship caulker who was well-known in the city. Myers learned quickly, and by the time he was 20, he had been placed in charge of a crew that caulked large clipper ships. Myers stayed in the trade for nearly a decade before moving on to open a grocery business in the early 1860s.
The Baltimore shipyards of the time employed both free blacks and slaves leased to the shipyard owners, including Frederick Douglass, who worked as a caulker in the few years leading up to his escape to freedom. In 1838, African American workers formed the Caulkers Association, one of the first African American trade unions in the United States. By the 1850s, black caulkers were paid well—well enough, in fact, that white workers and immigrants who also worked in the shipyards began speaking out against the African American workers. In 1858, riots began. Some shipyard owners, wary of the conflict, stopped hiring black caulkers. In 1865, white workers engaged in a strike that forced shipyards to fire African American workers, leading to more than 1,000 dock workers being fired.
Myers had stayed in contact with his friends who worked in the shipyards during the conflict. He worked his way up to be a high-ranking clerk in a wholesale grocery business. In response to the strike by white workers who targeted black shipyard workers, Myers organized a group of both African American and white business owners to create a new shipyard that would function as a cooperative. The new Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company employed more than 300 African American workers and the pay was good. The new shipyard was successful until 1884, when they lost the lease. Myers served as a board member for the company and an unofficial spokesperson.
Meanwhile, Myers focused most of his time on helping expand the black trade unionist movement. By 1868, he was president of the Colored Caulkers' Trade Union Society of Baltimore. He used that position to reach out to African American union members in other trades and cities in an effort to bring organizations that allowed African Americans to join into the National Labor Union, a new national federation of local unions. At the NLU's 1869 national convention, Myers and a delegation of African American union leaders addressed the gathering, making the case for equal treatment and acceptance of black leaders by the white leaders of organized labor. Myers said:

I speak today for the colored men of the whole country...when I tell you that all they ask for themselves is a fair chance; that you shall be no worse off by giving them that chance....The white men of the country have nothing to fear....We desire to have the highest rate of wages that our labor is worth.

The NLU rejected Myers plea, but they offered him and others the opportunity for African American unionists to join an affiliated, but separate, organization. Myers and other leaders formed the Colored National Labor Union. Over the next several years, Douglass had become the most well-recognized leader in the CNLU, which was hit hard by the depression of 1873. Both the NLU and CNLU folded because of the depression.
That didn't slow down Myers' organizing efforts. He launched a new organization, the Colored Men's Progressive and Cooperative Union, which was open to members of all occupational backgrounds. The new union not only allowed both white and black members, it was one of the few unions of the day to also welcome women.
In the 1870s, Myers became pretty heavily involved in politics and worked as a Customs Service agent and postal inspector. He continued to help organize in the South before returning to Baltimore in 1880 to run a coal yard. He stayed active in African American community organizations and edited the Colored Citizen, a weekly newspaper up until his death in 1891 at 56.
Check out all of our Black History Month labor profiles.Kenneth Quinnell
Thu, 02/21/2019 - 09:45
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Black History Month— Feb 21

Get to Know AFL-CIO's Affiliates: AFGE
AFL-CIO
Next up in our new series that will take a deeper look at each of our affiliates is the AFGE. The series will run weekly until we've covered all 55 of our affiliates.
Name of Union: American Federation of Government Employees
Mission:The union exists for the purpose of promoting unity of action in all matters affecting the mutual interests of government civilian employees in general, all other persons providing their personal service indirectly to the United States Government and for the improvement of government service.
Current Leadership of Union: J. David Cox Sr. is currently serving his third term as AFGE's national president. Cox, who is from North Carolina, began working in health care in 1970 and became a registered nurse in 1983. That launched a public sector career with the Veterans' Administration that lasted until 2006, when he became AFGE's national secretary-treasurer. Everett Kelley serves as national secretary-treasurer and Jeremy Lannan serves as national vice president for women and fair practices.
Current Number of Members:315,000.
Members Work As: Food inspectors, nurses, correctional officers, lawyers, police officers, census workers, scientists, doctors, park rangers, border patrol agents, transportation security officers, mechanics, computer programmers and more.
Industries Represented: Members work for the federal government or the government of the District of Columbia.
History: AFGE formed in 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression. Federal employees were refused most of the rights they have today. Politicians had crippled the civil service, and AFGE's founding members came together in opposition to these attacks. In the decades leading up to World War II, new chapters of the union began to form across the country. In the 1940s and 50s, AFGE fought for and won a pay raise of nearly 16%, the largest increase for the federal government workforce in the country's history. They also won within-grade pay increases, transportation allowances and payment for accrued annual leave, overtime, and night and holiday work. Finally, in 1962, federal workers secured the right to collectively bargain when President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988. Since then, AFGE has continued to fight for government workers and has won real bargaining rights and extended the dignity of a union contract to hundreds of thousands of Americans. Check out AFGE's Labor History Timeline to learn more.
Current Campaigns:Stop the Shutdown seeks to end the unfair and unnecessary shutdown of the federal government. AFGE is also fighting to protect the rights for TSA workers; protect correctional officers; protect official timefor federal employees and to fully fund and resource the Veterans Administration. AFGE's Use Your Voiceempowers young workers to engage their fellow AFGE members, friends and family to register to vote and turn out to the polls on Election Day. Family First is a campaign to pass paid parental leave for all working families.
Community Efforts:Each One, Teach One is a mentorship program for AFGE members. AFGE is part of AFL-CIO's Union Veterans Council whose mission is to inform, organize and mobilize union veterans. AFGE Y.O.U.N.G.seeks to mobilize young union members to become leaders for social change. AFGE's Pride program supports the union's LGBTQ membership and allies. HISCOsupports professional advancement, leadership development and education opportunity for AFGE members of Hispanic origin.
Learn More:Website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube.
Kenneth Quinnell
Tue, 02/19/2019 - 09:50— Feb 19

Collective Action Continues to Rise: The Working People Weekly List
AFL-CIO
Every week, we bring you a roundup of the top news and commentary about issues and events important to working families. Here’s the latest edition of the Working People Weekly List.
Number of Workers Striking Across the U.S. Jumped in 2018: "Almost 500,000 workers participated in work stoppages last year, driven primarily by protests in the education, health-care and social-assistance industries, the Labor Department said. Overall, there were more such disputes than in any year since 2007, and more people on strike or lockout than any year going back to 1987. 'If you think that neither the political system nor the economy is working for you, you turn to each other, knowing it’s the only way you can make change,' said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, which represents 12.5 million unionized workers."
Let’s Not Forget Unions and Collective Action When Discussing Victories on Workers’ Rights: "Too often in our public discourse about workplace issues, the crucial role of labor unions and the legal right of workers to join together in collective action to improve their working conditions is forgotten or ignored."
Trump Wrong to Scapegoat Immigrants, AFL-CIO President Says: "AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka discusses the trade war between the U.S. and China and the implications for the U.S. labor force with Bloomberg's Jason Kelly on "Bloomberg Markets: Balance of Power."
Was It Worth It? Many Suffered in Trump’s Wall Budget Loss: "Wall or no wall, that wasn’t the question during a silent demonstration in the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building. For 35 minutes on Wednesday afternoon, members of the American Federation of Government Employees and others held their fists high to mark the number of days in the longest shutdown that ended three weeks ago. In solemn fashion, they declared not to tolerate such an assault on the government and its workforce. Arms were raised. At the sound of triangle chimes and a small bell rung on each minute, individuals lowered one arm and then raised the other. Each minute was displayed on a paper plate, so the demonstrators would know how much they had to endure."
Congress’s Spending Deal Doesn’t Include Back Pay for Federal Contractors: "Democratic lawmakers led by Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith wanted to attach a bill guaranteeing back pay for federal contractors to a final spending package in an effort to provide some financial relief for as many as 580,000 workers who may have missed out on wages during the recent shutdown. Contractors say they struggled with everything from covering medications to buying baby formula. The legislation, which would have been the first law of its kind to grant contractors back pay after a government shutdown, had been caught up in spending negotiations and faced Republican pushback, according to multiple Democratic sources. As Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) told reporters pointedly on Wednesday, 'I’ve been told the president won’t sign that....I guess federal contractors are different in his view than federal employees.'"
Working People Rally to Protect Dreamers and Workers with TPS: "More than 1,000 of our union brothers and sisters from across the country marched on Capitol Hill Tuesday to call on Congress to save the temporary protected status (TPS) program and allow the workers who depend on it to continue to pursue their dreams in America."
Painters Lend Helping Hand in the Construction Trades: "Work in the construction trades is very physically and mentally demanding. For some workers, those conditions, combined with other factors, can lead to the need for support from the community. The Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) union is stepping up to provide that support for workers who are dealing with depression or substance abuse with IUPAT Helping Hand, a new program designed to raise awareness and provide resources for working people who are struggling."
No More Shutdowns: In the States Roundup: "It's time once again to take a look at the ways working people are making progress in the states. Click on any of the links to follow the state federations on Twitter."
U.S. Unions Bring Solidarity to Striking Mexican Workers: "A delegation of union leaders from the national AFL-CIO, the Texas AFL-CIO, the UAW and the United Steelworkers (USW) traveled to Matamoros, Mexico, last week to support tens of thousands of factory workers who have launched a wave of strikes to demand wage increases and democratic control of their unions."
Get to Know AFL-CIO's Affiliates: Amalgamated Transit Union: "Next up in our new series of taking a deeper look at each of our affiliates is Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU). The series will run weekly until we've covered all 55 of our affiliates."
Kenneth Quinnell
Fri, 02/15/2019 - 10:57— Feb 15